Best Practice 63

Short description: X-Road® is an open-source software and ecosystem solution that provides unified and secure data exchange between organisations. It is a centrally managed distributed data exchange layer between information systems that provides a standardised and secure way to produce and consume services. The basic idea of X-Road is that members of an ecosystem exchange data through access points (Security Servers) that implement the same technical specifications. X-Road ensures confidentiality, integrity and interoperability between data exchange parties.

X-Road has been used to automate the data transfer between the population registers of Estonia and Finland, improving information accuracy and timeliness as well as increasing the efficiency and security of the data exchange process. This facilitates the identification of the citizens of one of the two countries in the other one, fostering cross-border mobility and economic development.

The national business registers in Estonia and Finland are starting to exchange data and queries between each other, taking advantage of the opportunities given by X-Road.

X-Road is a digital public good verified by the Digital Public Goods Alliance. It is released under the MIT open source licence and is available free of charge.

Recommendations: Digital Government Integration (7); Standardisation and Reuse (11, 12); Governance, Partnerships and Capabilities (18)